I’m Impressed

In something like six years of blogging, this may be the most spectacular act of institutional tone deafness I’ve seen—certainly from an institution that’s supposed to be all about using new media to advance a political agenda:

This is Jennifer Palmieri, acting CEO of the Center for American Progess Action Fund.

Most readers know that the views expressed on Matt’s blog are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s comments about Third Way. Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects – including a homeland security transition project – and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.

It’s like they made a list of the dozen ways they could’ve handled some minor internecine friction—including just ignoring it—and asked: “Which of these is really guaranteed to blow up in our face in the most self-defeating way possible?” I mean, believe me, this is not the first time in history a D.C. blogger wrote something that ruffled a feather or two upstairs—I may have done it myself once or twice. But the response is usually, well, a bit more deft. I guess they get points for transparency, since normally you’d never hear about the internal “try not to piss on our allies more than necessary” e-mail, but I somehow doubt that this was a principled act of PR seppuku.

So congratulations, Third Way, a whole lot of people who’d never heard of you now know exactly one thing about you: You’re thin-skinned whiners. And a word of advice for Ms. Palmieri: If you’re going to be a “senior vice president of communications” for an institution that communicates through blogs, you may want to take a couple days off to figure out how these wacky “blog” things work. Here: Just to get you started, I’ll save you the trouble of Googling “Streisand Effect.”